


happily ever after

by lunardistance



Category: Sound Horizon
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, F/M, Poison, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-30
Updated: 2013-04-30
Packaged: 2017-12-10 00:20:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/779638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunardistance/pseuds/lunardistance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>this is what happens when you pull a princess out of eternal sleep and into a cruel reality.</p>
            </blockquote>





	happily ever after

**Author's Note:**

> born out of too much musing about märchen's version of "snow white", and inspired by a couple of fanart pieces on pixiv (namely [this](http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=15503213) and [this](http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=15493272)). beta'd by **flyautopilot** and **desistances**.

**eins.**  
  
Their wedding night doesn't go exactly as she expects it to. Of course, no one in the palace expected ever having to deal with the sudden and untimely death of the nearby kingdom's monarch at the royal wedding. After all, some plans were made to be broken, and that was what servants and diplomats were for: to clean up all the nasty little details that royals simply had no time for.  
  
She enters their bedchambers filled with excitement and no small amount of apprehension. Earlier on, she had mustered up all of her courage to ask what exactly was supposed to happen during a wedding night, a question that her ladies-in-waiting had eagerly scrambled to answer. Whether it was in hopes of gaining the favor of the crown prince's consort or petty intrigue over future court gossip, she did not know. Nor did she particularly care to discover, but she listened attentively all the same.  
  
She thinks all the combined knowledge of every handmaiden in the castle could never prepare her for such a tremendous event. The pressure wrought by the multitude of stares she had received while walking down the enormous aisle to meet her future husband was immense. Beauty was one quality appreciated in a future queen and one she already had firmly under her corset; more important was her ability to support her husband as he ruled, working from the quiet shadows behind parlor rooms and dainty embroidery and delicate teacups. And, of course, the most important of all was her ability to bear a suitable heir.  
  
She would be lying if she weren't scared to death (just a little ironic considering what she had gone through to get here). Her stepmother had never bothered to explain the workings of the court to her, let alone the expectations of a queen. Briefly she felt the now-familiar twinge of anger stir within her, a burst of warm poison coursing through her veins, but she forced herself to calm. The evil queen was now dead, icy cold in her very own casket (marble, not glass), and thinking of her at this point in time would only ensure one more victory for her even after death.  
  
The chambers are cool at night, and she shivers just a little in her thin chemise and bloomers. She pauses to let her eyes adjust to the darkness, and she finds her husband seated at the edge of their bed. He is similarly stripped down to sleeping garments, but his restless posture indicates that sleeping is the farthest thing from his mind. His gaze stretches outside the window, a million miles away, and she cannot help but wonder if he is as nervous as she.  
  
"My Prince?" her voice echoes faintly across the large room, no trace of her loud ringing laugh through her stepmother's death throes.  
  
He looks away from the window and finds her at the other end of the room, trying in vain to blend in with the shadows. Her ebony black hair disappears into the darkness, but the moonlight bathes her pale skin with its glow. Her eyes are huge and stark against her face, pupils blown up in the low light.  
  
He regards her silently for a few moments before smiling. "Come," he beckons, gesturing to the other side of the bed.  
  
She swallows, hoping that he does not notice in the darkness, and pads to the bed. Gingerly, she slips under the bedcovers and fiddles with the pillows as long as she can. When she can no longer delay looking at him, she sneaks a glance through her fringe.  
  
He is still watching her and manages to catch her peeking at him. She tamps down an embarrassed squeak and forces herself to meet his gaze.  
  
"Go to sleep," he tells her gently.  
  
Her throat goes dry, and she has to swallow a few times before she can say anything. Had she accidentally done something to offend him? Was he displeased with her in some way? Did he not want to...? To...? "B-but, what about—"  
  
"We do not have to consummate our marriage tonight," he answers in the same soft tone, sending a simultaneous rush of relief and disappointment through her. He lays a hand across hers, returning her gaze meaningfully. "I will not force you into something you are not ready for."  
  
"But..." And suddenly, she is acutely aware of how his hand completely engulfs hers, of how large his body is compared to hers.  
  
"Sleep," he soothes her, gently but firmly leading her to rest her head on the pillow, and she finds that she cannot refuse the call of sleep. Her hand twitches in his, a last attempt at staying awake, but the soft stroke of his fingers through her hair seal her fate.  
  
She awakens the next morning to the feeling of sunlight on her face. The other side of the bed is neatly made, cold and empty.

 

 **zwei.**  
  
"What do you mean he will not be joining us this morning?"  
  
The unfortunate messenger assigned to bringing her the news tries to hide his wince, but not quickly enough to escape her eyes. "His Imperial and Royal Highness will be occupied with overseeing the border patrol reports this morning and has requested that Her Imperial and Royal Highness proceed with breakfast without him."  
  
Her face quickly furrows into a deep scowl, and she takes some small measure of consolation in the way the man goes rigid on the spot. Apparently, her little display at the wedding celebration had cemented her reputation as a sadistic ruler that would not hesitate to have anyone who so displeased her executed at the snap of her fingers. Never mind that no one in the castle had died since the wedding. Castle rumors are such vicious things.  
  
And yet there is nothing she can do. She can throw a tantrum all she wants, maybe even send the messenger down to the dungeons for a lashing or two if she so desires (not that she had any intention of putting out such an order, but the option was there), and her husband will still not pull out of his meetings just to join her for a meal.  
  
She knows it is partly her fault – all that traipsing around to find a bride had resulted in a backlog of princely duties, not to mention the sudden annex of the neighboring kingdom to their territory with the death of the queen and her as its sole heir – but that does not soothe the frustration a single bit.  
  
Still, it is very unbecoming of a future queen to express such displeasure so noisily, and she dismisses the messenger with a quick wave of her hand. The man nearly trips over himself in his haste to leave the room, and she represses a derisive snort, choosing instead to focus on her day's breakfast.  
  
The scowl returns in full force, and she forcefully pushes away the slice of steaming pie. "Bring me another breakfast! I detest apples!"

 

 **drei.**  
  
After the initial novelty of royal life has worn off, she finds herself in an almost perpetual state of ennui. The servants were scandalized with her initial offers to help with the cooking and cleaning, instead ushering her into the hands of the castle tutors who seem to have nothing to do with their lives save for educate her on court etiquette and the workings of a kingdom.  
  
She does not mind, really. She knows that these are the tools she will need for when she takes her place at her husband's side as Queen. It is when her daily routine is entirely composed of balancing books on her head and reciting the royal family tree from its very first ancestors that this bothers her. She would much rather flee to the castle's lower floors and lose herself in mindlessly scrubbing at stone walls.  
  
The court ladies and her handmaidens are companions, but not very good ones. All they ever seem to be interested in is gossip and the latest fashions, endlessly asking her if she knows about Freiin Whatshername's affair with that foreign dignitary (oh, the scandal!) or whether she prefers ecru to eggshell white. (Frankly, she thinks both colors are horrid.)  
  
She will probably be berated for this later, but the moment she is free from language lessons, she escapes to the castle's expansive flower gardens. The relative peace and quiet of nature is a soothing balm to her frazzled soul, and she allows herself to breathe just a little easily, taking in the perfumed scents of the gardens. Surreptitiously, she slips her heels off, and, with a cursory glance to make sure no one is watching, she disappears behind a topiary bird.  
  
The further she wanders in, the thicker the surrounding plants grow. She speeds up her pace a little, breaking into a light jog. The trees go by her in a blur of green, sunlight streaming in through the patches between their leaves. If she squints a little, pretends that the plants are wild and untrained, it is almost like the forest that grew right beside her old home.  
  
She feels her feet pound heavily against the ground. She is full out running now, grass and pebbles tearing at her feet. Blood rushes through her ears, along with the whispers of a voice she had thought to be long buried six feet under, in the past, where it can no longer haunt her.  
  
 _Filthy child..._  
  
 _"Wait, princess!"_  
  
 _Demon child..._  
  
 _"Wait for me!"_  
  
 _Unwanted child..._  
  
 _"Princess!"_  
  
 _Unloved child..._  
  
She bursts into a clearing, half-expecting to find a lovely small house nestled deep in the woods.  
  
All she finds is an abandoned fountain, water streaming up in a weak arc barely strong enough to wash away the dust and dirt that has collected on its surface.  
  
She stumbles towards it, reaching out with cupped hands to collect enough water for her parched throat. Water trickles down her throat, slipping out of the sides of her mouth in her haste and dripping onto her ruined dress. She leans heavily against the fountain, staring blindly into the watery depths until her tears spill out of her eyes and drip down, down, down into the pool.

 

 **vier.**  
  
No matter how hard she tries, she can never stay awake long enough to catch her husband joining her. She is no stranger to sleeping by herself, but there is a difference between sleeping alone on a tiny cot and sleeping alone in a humongous four-poster bed obviously meant for two. Somehow, the nights are colder now than when she used to lay curled up on a flimsy mattress.  
  
Sometimes she cannot help but wonder if he even comes to bed at all. His side of the bed is always cold to the touch by the time she awakens, and always so immaculately made that it appears as if no one has slept there at all the previous night. Unbidden doubts rise to her mind, fueled by hushed snippets of rumors shared between tittering court ladies and her own silent insecurities.  
  
They still had not consummated their marriage. She knows it is a source of discord between her husband and the royal advisors. They argue that her kingdom, pitiful as it was under the late Queen's rule, has still not fully accepted the sudden transfer of power and nothing but the assurance of a worthy heir would soothe their complaints. He, in turn, argues that it is far too early to expect a child when his bride has barely grown out of being one herself, not to mention that the King and Queen are still the ruling powers.  
  
The news of his determined stance against the persistence of the royal advisors makes her unspeakably happy, and yet her doubts are still not completely dispelled. What if he really does not want to consummate the marriage after all, and his concern for her is a mere ruse to cover up for his disinterest? What if he only felt obligated to marry her after managing to wake her, and regretted his decision? What if he did not love her at all?  
  
It is much harder to drive off such fears when one is alone at night, clinging to a pillow instead of one's beloved husband as a newlywed couple should be doing. Eventually, exhaustion claims her, and she falls into a restless sleep of bloodied snow and laughing mirrors.  
  
She wakes up one night, barely stirring, to glimpse her husband perched on the other side of the bed. He does not lie beneath the bedcovers; he merely sits on the edge, watching her sleep. She keeps her breath slow and even, trying to maintain the facade of unconsciousness as she waits to see what he will do.  
  
It takes every ounce of self-control in her body to keep from gasping when he reaches out slowly, carefully, to thread a finger through a lock of her hair. He leans over, pressing his lips to the ends of the silken strands. "So beautiful," he murmurs into her hair.  
  
She does not fall asleep after that, not even when he lies down to rest for a few hours before waking up at the crack of dawn and leaving their bedchambers without a word.

 

 **fünf.**  
  
A few weeks later, she falls into a strange sort of illness. Not even the best healers in the kingdom know what it is, what causes the crown princess' night terrors, let alone how to stave them off. They try everything, from filling the royal bedchambers with dream catchers to forcing down a thousand different combinations of herbs and medicines down her throat. Not a single one works.  
  
Strangely, even though she takes on a sick pallor, she is still radiant in her illness. Her lips are still as red as blood, and her ebony black hair never loses its sheen. The kingdom takes this to be a blessing from the heavens. She knows better to believe them: it is nothing but a curse, part of the wish her mother made that one snowy day that cost her life to grant.  
  
If there is one silver lining to this (aside from being properly excused from her lessons), it is that her husband actually takes time out of his duties to watch over her. He is there to soothe her after she wakes up screaming from another nightmare of fanged combs and nooses made out of ribbons. She does feel guilty, however, that he loses more and more precious sleep over taking care of her through the night on top of all his obligations as the Kronprinz.  
  
All of the healers are stumped. Even the medicine men invited from the neighboring kingdoms cannot cure the princess' illness. That is, until one day, when an old woman cloaked in a red hood enters the royal bedchambers, bearing nothing but a single basket. Some scoff at her appearance, and she regards the old woman wearily from where she is propped against a mountain of pillows.  
  
The woman makes no bold claims; she merely sets the basket at the foot of the bed. With the entire room watching, the woman removes the cloth over the basket, and all of the occupants collectively gasp and take a shocked step backwards.  
  
The basket is entirely full of apples, ripe and richly succulent. All eyes snap to the princess, waiting with bated breath for her to throw the apples across the room and exile the old woman from the kingdom for even daring to bring the fruits in her presence.  
  
And yet she is transfixed by them. A strange hunger rises up in the pit of her stomach, stirring ravenousness inside of her that she has not felt for months. She selects an apple, one of a particular redness, and takes a tentative bite.  
  
She finishes it off in seconds, and the rest of the basket within the next ten minutes. When she sleeps through that night without a single nightmare, the kingdom rejoices.

 

 **sechs.**  
  
She barely eats anything but apples nowadays. Each meal prepared for the crown princess must have at least one apple-based portion, or else she will refuse it. Each room that she frequents has at least one bowl of fresh apples, and she always makes sure to have at least two hidden within her pockets for wandering around the castle grounds.  
  
And yet, even though she is no longer physically ill, a melancholy has taken over her. No one ever speaks of it openly, but she is no fool. She can hear the court whispers – depression, they say. Loneliness. Dejection.  
  
Much to the delight of her tutors, she buries herself in the library shelves, taking comfort in the tomes of ancient texts. With a bowl of apples beside her, she reads through volume after volume, soaking in each piece of written knowledge until her eyes ache and weariness drags her to bed.  
  
The castle library has a very interesting selection, everything from the history of the kingdom to more forbidden texts that one would not usually find in more public repositories. She stumbles upon a collection of fairytales one day, tucked into one of the more hard-to-reach shelves, and settles down with it for the day. There is one in particular that strikes her: a sleeping princess, more beautiful than any other, cursed on her fifteenth birthday to sleep for a hundred years in a tower of wild roses until her fated one wakes her with true love's first kiss.  
  
("Did you hear? The Kronprinz will not even touch her.")  
  
She returns the book to the shelf and hurries back to her bedchambers early for the night, so rattled that she forgets to eat an apple before going to sleep. She wakes up screaming, her stepmother's voice echoing through her ears, and claws at her throat – the apple, the poisoned apple, it was stuck there, choking her, she couldn't breathe, she _couldn't_ —  
  
She lies there shivering until the maids find her in the morning, huddled under the covers with wide, terrified eyes, and has to be coaxed into taking a sleeping draught. Her last thought before drifting into unconsciousness is that her husband was not there with her.  
  
Somehow, these thoughts warp into another twisted dream – no, a _premonition_ , she is convinced – of her husband riding through a hedge of thorns, climbing up an ivory tower and bursting into a room to find the sleeping princess. And, oh, she is beautiful, with hair like sunshine and skin like a budding rose and lips that shame even hers. Lips that the prince claims for his own.  
  
("That used to be you, die Kronprinzessin, but now it is her – Dornröschen!")  
  
She searches for different books now, the ones on witchcraft and spells. She finally finds one at the very top level of the farthest bookshelf, hidden away as if someone feared its discovery. Going greedily through another apple, she flips desperately through the pages. A spell for fertility. A spell for love. A spell for eternal youth and beauty.  
  
She stops at that one, scans it briefly for its requirements. The base ingredient was simple: a single apple.

 

 **sieben.**  
  
"Your Highness! Your Highness!"  
  
He looks up from a dock report at the flustered messenger that has burst through the doors, and frowns. "Herr Weiss, I specifically ordered not to be inter-"  
  
"Forgive me, Your Highness, but the Kronprinzessin! She will not wake!"  
  
Those words are all that it takes for him to drop the papers and thunder out the door. He strides through the halls single-mindedly, and breaks into a run when the royal bedchambers are in sight.  
  
The scene inside is chaotic. The ladies-in-waiting stay in the outer rooms; a few are stretched out on the fainting couches while the others huddle together and bury their faces into lacy handkerchiefs. Further inside, the castle healers surround the bed, servants anxiously standing by with towels and basins of water at hand.  
  
All activity stops when he reaches the side of the bed, and the healers part to allow him to see his wife.  
  
There, in the middle of the bed, looking as though she were merely asleep, was his Schneewittchen. Beautiful as the day he first laid eyes on her.  
  
He moves to sit at the edge of the bed, but his boot scuffs against something heavy. He looks down and finds half an apple at his feet, two dainty bites taken out of it. Out of the corner of his eyes, he spots his wife's treasure box hanging open, its secret compartment removed and emptied.  
  
He returns his attention to his wife, his beautiful dead wife, and leans in to capture her blood-red lips one last time.  
  
She tastes of poison.


End file.
